


on the subject of flaws

by Anonymous



Series: Gramander ficlets [4]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28490001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Everyone has flaws. It's a matter of finding the ones you can live with.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander
Series: Gramander ficlets [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086830
Kudos: 17
Collections: Anonymous





	on the subject of flaws

Percival Graves is irritable and a bit (a lot) of a grump. He doesn't smile easily and sighs a lot. He's fussy with the organization of his office and library and exact lineup of each expensive fountain pen. His palette is refined but more importantly picky from a childhood reared in luxury. That's not to say he won't take food when offered, but that he has a long lasting relationship with an exclusive eating club that no one else in the entire Woolsworth building had even heard of. (Well except for Seraphina Picquery perhaps, but her family had only risen to prominence in the past two generations and the memberships were not extended until at least after the fifth generation of influence. Even then, there were limited spots and wizards have long, hale life spans.) Graves enjoys the finer things in life and is quite happy to employ a Parisian tailor and house elves in the running of his household. He is also a workaholic and will quite happily drown in a mountain of paperwork if left to his own devices. The bureaucracy of MACUSA is a beautiful pattern of systems that he navigates with the ease of someone born and raised to lead from the top. Because he demands so much of himself, he also demands the same of everyone around him. There is an unspoken rule in his office that no one leaves until the boss does. There is absolutely no room in his life for error and similarly, no leeway for any slip ups from those employed under him. Percival Graves is not an unkind man, but there is little wonder that Gellert Grindelwald quietly slipped into his skin and absolutely no one could tell.

Newton Scamander is not an easy man to get along with. His main interaction of the world is through animals, and in the animal world, social graces are a set of easily observable and coded rituals. Newt knows rituals and he records them faithfully in his little never-ending notebook. He can sneak up on a sunning werecat and coax a frightened occamy onto his arm, but he doesn't know to reflexively greet people when he sees them nor to explain what he is thinking before springing into action. His temper is mercurial and subject to change at the slightest provocation; he is not an easily angered man, but he flits between melancholy and euphoria and simmering irritation as if they were simply adjacent moods and not on opposite ends of the spectrum. He talks to his animals and to himself and even continues his monologue in his brain even while other people speak to him. Newt is intelligent in the simplest and most boring definition of the term. He doesn't mean to, but intention matters little when the other party always ends up feeling like they've been treated like unknowing and slow children after a conversation with him. He doesn't have any interest in things outside his research and that makes holding any conversation with him exceedingly difficult unless the other is particularly versed in Thestral mating habits or is willing to listen to him explain their intricate courting rituals for hours on end. Newt doesn't have friends, and he couldn't be bothered about it.

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from tumblr for posterity :)


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